Hate It or Love It: The Return of Deafheaven—Metal’s Most Divisive Band

Since their expansive 2013 album Sunbather brought black metal perilously close to mainstream acceptance, purists have derided Deafheaven as frauds, poseurs, and hipster rich kids. Now, the California band would like to the record straight.

Deafheaven frontman George Clarke sounds like man in need of some serious unburdening. It’s no wonder: In the last two years, his band has been lambasted by the notoriously cloistered metal community, routinely derided as frauds, poseurs, and hipster rich kids. All of it is a result of the exposure that came with their 2013 album Sunbather, a total gamechanger that brought black metal perilously close to mainstream acceptance by merging it with shoegaze beauty, post-rock expanse, and, to the chagrin of many, a pretty face. The album left such a big impact that directly ripping it off can now double as a career-stoking publicity stunt: The California quintet are none too pleased with a new band called Ghost Bath that named their recent album Moonlover and its lead single “Happyhouse”—a title suspiciously similar to Deafheaven’s own “Dreamhouse”. “They stole everything about their whole shit from us,” says guitarist Kerry McCoy, grousing about the downside of disruption in a copy-and-paste culture.

Deafheaven’s mere presence here at L.A.’s Hyperion Public could potentially constitute a “gotcha” moment for metal watch dogs: We’re two and a half hours into a light dinner and some heavy drinking at the country-chic gastropub in Silver Lake, where our server is mustachioed and wearing suspenders. Clarke frankly doesn’t look out of place, downing scotch and sporting a fresh, band-collar button down—a haute couture version of his typical, all-black stage attire. McCoy, who tends to be Deafheaven’s anchor in the metal world, is staying true in a Metallica Master of Puppets T-shirt; he shows up late and proceeds to rapidly consume four whiskey-and-beer combinations. McCoy doesn’t believe the accusations that have been aimed at Deafheaven are worth dignifying with a response, but Clarke is game, if only in hope that he can offer some final words and move on.

Because Deafheaven are ready to be done with Sunbather; Clarke describes next month’s follow-up, New Bermuda, as the polar opposite in every way. And while there are similarities between the two LPs—the churning chords of the new song “Luna” hearken back to “Dreamhouse”, for example—the differences are indeed striking. The languorous drone of “Baby Blue” makes good on the band’s purported influences of slowcore heavies like Low and Red House Painters; drummer Dan Tracy is no longer relied upon to play just blast beats. They refer to “Come Back” as “death metal Wilco” due to its prominent slide guitars. “Gifts for the Earth”, meanwhile, begins with a down-stroked riff Interpol could love and ends with a regal procession that resembles Oasis’ “Champagne Supernova”. (McCoy proudly notes that New Bermuda is set to drop on the 20th anniversary of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?)

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While Sunbather was split between epics and interludes, New Bermuda sounds more relentless and intense even before taking into account Clarke’s newly harrowing narrative: “Not even in dreams could I imagine my escape,” he sings at a key moment. While Sunbather was often described as shoegaze or indie rock as a way of foregrounding its basic appeal, its lyrical themes actually involved classic hip-hop tropes: lower-class kids visualizing success as a self-fulfilling prophecy. That album’s eponymous central character embodied the crass ways of signifying a good life: the beautiful woman, the house, the ability to do fuck all in the afternoon. Rather than being an indictment of the American Dream, though, Clarke actually wanted all of those things when he wrote those songs.

“This new album is more rooted in the reality of being a 26-year-old adult with adult fears—I’m not a shitty kid living on a living room floor...” Clarke starts, before McCoy finishes the thought, “... wishing that I was rich.”

Considering their trajectory, it’s probably no surprise that Deafheaven’s favorite MC is Drake—another guy who’s upended a genre amidst accusations of not being real or hard enough. (McCoy recently dropped $300 at the rapper’s OVO Store on a phone case and two shirts.) But despite actually starting from the bottom, Deafheaven became wrongly stereotyped as privileged hipsters the usual way, through insecurity and projection. Sunbather encompassed a vast emotional scale—drugs, the pathology passed through generations, depression, ecstasy, along with what their new label boss, Anti- owner Brett Gurewitz, describes as a “profound yearning” akin to U2 or Sigur Ros. The album was clearly about being poor and fatherless and without hope—it’s final lyrics are “I am my father’s son/ I am no one/ I cannot love/ It’s in my blood”—and just about every major event in Deafheaven’s early career was the result of ingenuity and blind luck in the face of financial desperation.

Clarke and McCoy both grew up in Modesto, California, a town that essentially translates to “modest upbringing.” For previous generations, it might have been best known as the setting for George Lucas’ iconic American Graffiti, a quaint outpost between L.A. and the Bay. While its agricultural economy and general isolation led to it being tagged as the Midwest of California, these days, it’s more likely known by another, more damning nickname: Methdesto.

It was a shitty place for guys like McCoy and Clarke to grow up, because they mostly had shitty attitudes. They met in ninth grade and shared both a proclivity for bratty metal and a dislike for everyone else. Clarke describes his predominant mindset back then thusly: “I’m a loser and I hate everyone.” McCoy was even more combative: “I was the 14-year-old in an Anti-Flag shirt just going, You’re a poser, you’re a poser, you’re a poser, fuck you, you’re a poser.”

Their prospects for the future were bleak. Obsessed with music, McCoy figured he would toil in a tiny band while working terrible jobs. He still doesn’t have a high school diploma. “Senior year, I wound up partying so hard I kinda accidentally dropped out,” he says. Clarke had ideas about becoming a teacher, but there was one problem: He hated school. “I didn’t know what the fuck I was gonna do,” the singer admits. For much of their teens, the only times the two weren’t hanging out were when either of them was grounded, either for grades, catching a misdemeanor for vandalism, or getting caught smoking weed and drinking in the park. “I put my parents through hell,” McCoy says, “and they essentially gave up.” As high school drew to a close, they both became homeless, crashing in friends’ houses and cars. “Sleeping in the same car can bring people closer together,” notes McCoy.

They got their first apartment together soon thereafter, but were booted after McCoy got fired from his job and “almost charged with embezzlement.” It was white-collar crime in a no-collar situation, as he was skimming money off the top while selling booze and cigarettes as a gas station clerk. The upside: They lived rent-free for the next few months as their eviction paperwork was being processed. Clarke and McCoy started Deafheaven shortly thereafter.

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In 2009, Clarke was the first to leave Modesto and head out to San Francisco, an experience he equates to “trying to fly out of a black hole.” After hitching a ride for an agreed (and still-unpaid) fee of $50, McCoy soon joined him with $30 worth of food stamps and a willingness to do whatever paid the bills. At the time, McCoy was in a “dark situation” he’s not eager to revisit, but the Sunbather interlude “Windows” does feature a recording of the guitarist completing a deal for opiates on the streets of San Francisco. (Later on, at the behest of their management, the band removed all drug references from their personal Twitter and Instagram accounts as they applied for visas to tour overseas.) Bassist Stephen Clark simply attributes Deafheaven’s beginnings to a “willingness to accept to a lower standard of living.”

McCoy and Clarke continued to move in lockstep by taking part-time jobs at a call center, each making about $400 a month. Luckily, their combined rent was just $500; today, an average one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco will run you roughly seven times that amount. “If we had to pay real San Francisco rent, we never would’ve made it,” Clarke says. It’s not that they were living outside of the city but that their living situation was likely illegal in any number of ways. Clarke and McCoy were two of 14 people housed in a converted 12-room nunnery within the Mission District. And even then, they weren’t trustworthy enough to be relied upon for rent. “I printed out fake bank statements that we gave to the realtor,” Clarke smirks. “I don’t think the landlord did thorough background checks.” In reality, Clarke’s only collateral was his EBT card, which he would sell for cash upfront.

It was in that packed house where the original Deafheaven demo was written, McCoy sketching the music on acoustic guitars and Macbook drums. Otherwise, everything was borrowed, from the gear, to the time, to the money. The demo cost $500 to make and it took the band eight months to repay its producer. By 2011, when the demo started generating attention from labels, they had been evicted from the nunnery. Even still, McCoy calls this run-and-gun era “some of the most fun times of my life.”

"I was the 14-year-old in an Anti-Flag shirt just going, 'You’re a poser, you’re a poser, fuck you, you’re a poser.'"

Back then, they were plucky, ambitious, and generally clueless about how touring worked. They also smelled and looked awful. In an act of mercy on their first major tour, dark instrumental headliners Russian Circles began buying them cheap hotel rooms so they could at least shower on occasion. Deafheaven’s current manager Cathy Pellow took a chance on the band after Russian Circles’ drummer Dave Turncrantz did some begging on their behalf. She had doubts as to whether Deafheaven could make any sort of headway, but she was impressed by their energy and motivated by what she feels like was maternal instinct. “People don’t understand how poor these guys really were,” she tells me. “I had to help them.”

Upon seeing them live for the first time, Pellow remembers thinking, “I can’t believe this band is this band—that guy [Clarke] is way too beautiful to be this intense.” Image is a touchy subject in the metal community, which very well might be more obsessed with outside appearances than other genres and is particularly enamored with the idea of sonic and visual ugliness as an indicator of authenticity. Which is to say: Deafheaven’s non-neanderthal haircuts quickly became the most scrutinized metal ‘dos since Metallica chopped their manes circa Load. Though, as McCoy’s girlfriend Kim Galdamez, who organizes the Born for Burning underground metal night in Los Angeles, notes, “I’d say most of the dudes involved in the first wave of black metal were good looking, does that make them false?” It’s a rhetorical question that still gets answers on both sides.

Still, the relative approachability of Deafheaven’s image has helped them far more than it could ever hurt them. In fact,Pellow pushed Clarke to consider modeling when they first started working together, telling him, “I could get you a Calvin Klein campaign in five minutes—you’d never have to worry about money again.” The offer became something of a running joke, though she still thinks Clarke could be an actor in the future. At this prospect, the frontman demurs; he feels like he’s gotten too fat for the modeling biz in the past year anyway. To illustrate this point, he pulls up his shirt and does a slow-motion belly roll.

As the 2010 demo started to catch on, Clarke remembers skipping a math class at the City College of San Francisco to take a call from Deathwish Records co-founder Tre McCarthy. He pantomimes McCarthy’s gruff Boston accent while remembering the call: “I gotta tell you, man, I’m so relieved that you guys don’t look like real weirdos—you look like normal people, and I like that, so let’s do something.”

Deafheaven may not wear corpse paint—and their crowds may include a significant number of people who otherwise have no interest in metal—but they still put on a very real metal show in terms of volume, energy, and theatricality. Clarke describes his stage presence as a combination of Freddie Mercury and onetime Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo; he’s constantly prowling and gesticulating, conducting the audience with his arms in a way that occasionally gives people the wrong impression. Naturally, opinions on the Deafheaven live experience are intense on both sides. The punk parody site The Hard Times once wrote an article entitled “Deafheaven Bassist Falls Asleep On Stage” that naysayers truly wanted to believe was legit. But the gigs I’ve seen tend to be more like one in Moscow that drove a particularly rabid fan to climb on stage to lick Clarke’s boots.

After seeing them numerous times, Anti-’s Gurewitz admits he was afraid to meet Deafheaven in person. “I was a little intimidated by them,” he says. “I thought they were going to be these super intense, cult-like personalities.” If the band was truly concerned about how they would be viewed by the metal community, signing with Anti- is a wonderful way of telling it to fuck off. Anti- is a sister label of punk rock institution Epitaph Records, and both have recently been rebranding themselves as strongholds for ambitious rock due to recent signees like Title Fight, Desaparecidos, and The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. But for most people, it’s known as the house the Offspring built and sustained by long-running NPR faves like Tom Waits, Neko Case, and, most recently, Wilco.

“If you're truly a metal guy, the label is probably not even on your radar,” Gurewitz admits. It’s worth noting that Anti- came into the picture after talks between Deafheaven and indie stalwart Sub Pop came to a standstill; Clarke and McCoy were troubled by what they felt was a lack of urgency from that label, and were also concerned about the band’s fit on their roster. (A representative from Sub Pop writes in an email: “Though we don’t publicly discuss contract negotiations, we’re great fans of Deafheaven and wish them all the success in the world.”) “George didn't want to be pigeonholed as just merely heavy music,” according to Gurewitz. “But he also told me that part of what was appealing to him about Anti- was that it was an indie-rock label that had an experience of heavy music because of Epitaph—he wasn’t really interested in being on an indie-rock label in the first place.”

Sunbather was an expression of Deafheaven’s base desires, and really, most of them came true. Clarke has even repaired his relationship with his estranged father, while McCoy says he’s “best friends with my parents now because I stopped being an asshole.” Everyone in Deafheaven has been able to quit their menial day jobs. (McCoy, Clarke, and Clark had worked most recently at Whole Foods, where their customer base may have included hipsters, but, once again, that doesn’t mean they were.) They were also able to get out of their squat house living. Pellow kindly notes how Clarke and McCoy’s friendship has evolved: “They grew up and don’t have to sleep on the floor anymore—they spend a little less time with each other now because they have hot girlfriends who are both rad.”

And yet New Bermuda still heaves under the new weight of adulthood, expectations, and existential grief. Clarke says the title of the album popped into his head when he and his girlfriend, Alex Venegas, were having trouble getting acclimated to the disillusioning details of their new home of Los Angeles. The singer couldn’t help but think of L.A. as a “paradise that comes with all this treachery,” a void in which the success and happiness of the past two years have vanished, unaccounted for. Venegas told him the whole Bermuda Triangle metaphor was a little too on-the-nose and borderline cheesy. “But, you know, it’s good to be that way sometimes,” Clarke responded—a preemptive strike to make sure that Deafheaven aren’t misunderstood for much longer.